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Interwar RAF Roundels- Blue- Airfix Bulldog


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Hi - Hoping someone can help out here :)

 

I am building the Airfix Bristol Bulldog and am not sure about the blue used in the roundels on the decal sheet. 

 

It seems that some interwar roundels may have had a paler blue than the "identification blue"  normally used.  I also know that  film used widely at the time made the blues come out very pale  in black and white photos which muddies the waters.

 

The decals supplied seem to be a bit too pale.  This hasn't been helped by seeing the same Airfix decal sheet in a kit review with the standard blue used. So I am not sure if the sheet I have has a colour printing error.

 

The decals shown are from the Airfix sheet sheet. The larger roundels at the bottom are from the SMER decal sheet for their 1/48th Bulldog which has a richer blue.

 

Any thoughts anyone? Do I need to raid the spares box?

 

iRoundels_zpsnvzjicjv.jpg

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also check out Hannants website for modeldecals range and xtradecals range. you can also just type in " bulldog" into their search bar and it will list all they have.plus they have generic RAF 20's/30's roundel sheets.

Edited by europapete
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22 hours ago, europapete said:

go to the walk-around section on this site and look at the bulldog photos, and also the RAF museum site. regards, Pete

Thanks Pete- appreciated

I think the Airfix ones may end up in spares box

Hope Spring comes early for you up in R.I. :)

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well, yesterday was glirious, sunny n 60's, today is 40's and chucking it down. oh well. but the daffodils are out, and birds are nesting 😀  actually got sone bench time in on the triplane last night too.

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20 hours ago, europapete said:

if you like inter-war RAF, look out for a book called " on silver wings" by Alec Lumsden. it is a collection of articles on the 20s/30s fighters with lots of useful modelling photos and plans in 1/72.

Thanks again Pete - will take a look out for it. :)

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Airlife had a monograph on the Bulldog some 20 years ago, by David Luff IIRC. This may be of help establishing whether the Firebirds had examples using a paler blue. How old are your Airfix decals? They tended to be very inconsistent in the Humbrol era. 

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16 hours ago, tempestfan said:

Airlife had a monograph on the Bulldog some 20 years ago, by David Luff IIRC. This may be of help establishing whether the Firebirds had examples using a paler blue. How old are your Airfix decals? They tended to be very inconsistent in the Humbrol era. 

 

Thanks for the book tip tempestfan. :) 

I do not know how old the decals are but the quality of printing is not the best the kit was certainly made by Humbrol (it has the Swedish Air Force alternative)- eek!

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There should be a (C) date somewhere on the box, though this will only give an approximate indication. Is it the small so-called Type 10 box (White Frame around the artwork) or a large Type 11 with full-size art ? Another reference I recommend is the old Dataplan by Alf Granger, as it contains loads of drawings, also annotated  black/White ones of paint schemes.

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A couple of observations on 'roundel blue' from 1914 to the interwar period....
B/w film at the time often showed the blue to be much lighter than the blue we are used to seeing on museum examples etc. This was due to the way the film sensitivity varied its exposure to red, blue or green wavelengths. It might have been a deliberate choice of the film manufacturers - a dead giveaway is if the sky (particularly if there were hard shadows indicating clear sky) shows up as near-white on the print.
However.......
.....paint technology has moved on considerably since those days (and in the case of WW1, nobody was too concerned about colour-fastness), and paint was subject to considerable sun-bleaching. I have seen photos which exhibit obvious bleaching of the roundels to the point where the paintbrush-strokes have become visible and the fabric begins to show through. Magenta pigment seems to be most prone to this - but affects the red part of the roundel least in that, as the magenta element fades, the yellow in the mix helps to keep the colour looking red, whereas in the dark blue of the outer ring, as the magenta fades it will reveal the lighter cyan element of the blue making it lighter.
I hope this all makes sense - though I don't know if if helps!

 

What might help confirm the colour is, I have an original copy of a 1917 military signals manual, which includes a page of 'Flags of the World' and 'Aircraft National Markings' and the British blue Union Flag and Roundel are unequivocally dark blue. 
So I'd say, 1914 on, the roundels should be dark blue, not light as the Airfix Bulldog roundels (and some others)......unless the model you are depicting has seen service in sunnier climes than up here in Scotland, say a prolonged stay in Mesopotamia or the Western Desert!

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Modeldecal, of glorious memory, did a sheet of pre-war roundels, and they were a lighter shade of blue than the wartime ones.  Not a light blue, but a fairly strong medium blue   Backing Alan, I have also noted that even wartime blues can appear light on colour photos where fading/weathering has occurred, particularly on top of the wings, but I think that this is a different process.   I don't recall for sure whether the prewar ones were any lighter than the postwar colours, but perhaps they were.  Certainly they too will have faded, particularly in tropical climes, but that isn't a problem with the Bulldog, is it?

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On 06/04/2017 at 8:35 PM, tempestfan said:

Is it the small so-called Type 10 box (White Frame around the artwork)

 

Thanks again, tempestfan :)- it will be the Type 10- copyright date is 1991.

 

5 hours ago, alancmlaird said:

B/w film at the time often showed the blue to be much lighter than the blue we are used to seeing on museum examples etc.

 

5 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

Not a light blue, but a fairly strong medium blue

 

Hi Alan and Graham- big thanks for your comments. :) I am with you on the film

It seems that the interwar blue would have been "Identification Blue" which was changed to "Identification Blue (Dull)" during the war years hence the darker shade.

From my digging there are a lot of illustrations of inter war aircraft with very pale blues. I am wondering if the illustrators themselves were mislead by photographs which give the impression that the blue is pale without realising that it was the film stock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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17 hours ago, Pinback said:

 

Thanks again, tempestfan :)- it will be the Type 10- copyright date is 1991.

 

 

 

Hi Alan and Graham- big thanks for your comments. :) I am with you on the film

It seems that the interwar blue would have been "Identification Blue" which was changed to "Identification Blue (Dull)" during the war years hence the darker shade.

From my digging there are a lot of illustrations of inter war aircraft with very pale blues. I am wondering if the illustrators themselves were mislead by photographs which give the impression that the blue is pale without realising that it was the film stock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not being much into post-1939 military models, I'd never come across 'Identification Blue (Dull)' before! Filed in memory for later reference.
You are, I am certain, correct about mislead illustrators - I have seen several examples in books, and have even perpetrated it myself with my first side-view that I illustrated in Photoshop. That's what first made me look a bit deeper into the subject.
If you look at a wide range of photos, you will see quite a variation in the shade that the blue has been rendered. I can't imagine that squadron commanders just sent an erk down to the local Woolworths for a tin of any random blue - so I am pretty certain that generally the colour would have been pretty much 'Union Jack' blue and the variation is due to the film/print and exposure.

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I don't think that the prefix "Identification" was ever used - it sounds a bit American.  I've consulted Paul Lucas's book on the colours and markings of the Battle of Britain.  He speaks of the colour Bright Blue being used up to 1937, when it was replaced by the colour Blue - which is sometimes called Dull Blue but this was not official.  In 1947 the colour returned to being Bright Blue, which was later renamed Roundel Blue 110 when the British colours were absorbed into BS381C.

 

As for Union Jack blue - is that the same on any two flags?  I suspect that there is a definition nowadays but I don't know what it is, and suspect that had it existed earlier BS381C would not have used the term "Roundel Blue" for it.  Unless it is of course different.  It certainly isn't in BS381C - although there is a Royal Blue, this is considerably darker, and there is no Royal Red..

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On 09/04/2017 at 7:10 AM, alancmlaird said:

Not being much into post-1939 military models, I'd never come across 'Identification Blue (Dull)' before!

 

On 09/04/2017 at 7:30 AM, Graham Boak said:

I don't think that the prefix "Identification" was ever used

 

I will be a bit more mindful of using Wikipedia in future! :)

 

Thanks again for your comments - its a subject in its own right    (I will be raiding the spares box for the Bulldog)

 

 

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The colour was always based around the pigment Ultramarine, which is a mid-dark blue (A lot of modern decal sheets are too dark, especially for post war roundels, as the inks used tend to be standard Pantone colours - compare a 1980s Modeldecal sheet with one of the hannants re-issues)

 

Regarding this, there is a curious unattributed statement on the Wikipedia page for Ultarmarine:

 

During World War I, the

RAF painted the outer roundels with a color made from Ultramarine Blue. This became BS 108(381C) Aircraft Blue. It was replaced in the 1960s by a new color made on Phthalocyanine Blue, BS110(381C) Roundel Blue.

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